Stand Still, Look Pretty
by americanhoney139
Summary: Can Grace step out of her role as Perf and come back to her friends before she loses everything she loves... even herself? Grelson, Zevie, Stevie/Grace friendship. Rated T for cutting!


_I want to paint my face_

_And pretend that I am someone else_

She pastes her face with makeup to cover her flaws. She speaks differently to hide her true self. The hurtful words she spews aren't her; the stupid card she plays is just a coverup. All she had wanted in middle school was to be popular, and now she is. But at what cost? Her soul? Her vast vocabulary and love of knowledge? True friendship?

Nobody can ever see through the person she makes herself pretend to be. The perfect girl… the Perf. But all she is doing is cheating herself: of her true friend, of her high GPA, of her future. She doesn't even know who she is anymore.

_Sometimes I get so fed up_

_I don't even want to look at myself  
_

'I have to be perfect,' she thinks as she checks herself over in the mirror. No flaws, no pimples, no smudges of mascara. If she isn't perfect, what is she? There is only one word for a girl like her. Fake.

She is fake in every way. She isn't stupid, yet she acts like it. She is extremely smart, but Perfs aren't supposed to be smart. Her love of the world and her compassion are squished down by the person she had once called a friend. She can no longer wear certain types of clothes and, if she's having a horrible day, she can't come to school with sweats on.

_But people have problems that are worse than mine_

_I don't want you to think I'm complaining all the time_

When she's down, she has no one to turn to. She knows that being perfect and hating it are not the worst that can happen. She can be a starving kid in Africa, or a neglected child in China. But no, she is Grace King, second Perf in command of the school. Sometimes she wishes that someone will tell her to stop, to rethink her life and change it around.

And someone does… sometimes. Nelson Baxter is her knight in battered armor. He is the only one who knows the real her. But even then, she doesn't tell him about her problems. She is slipping down into a black hole and not even the pull of gravity, or the hand of a real friend, will be able to pull her out of it now.

_And I hate the way you look at me, I have to say_

_I wish I could start over_

Sometimes she will look at the people around her and wonder what they will think if she suddenly came to school as herself. Will they think she was just dressing up, or will they give her weird looks? What'll Molly think if she raises her hand in class to questions she isn't supposed to know the answer to? Will she be shunned by her peers? Her 'friends'?

She hates how some people look at her with such admiration, longing to be her. But what if they find out the her that they encounter everyday was just a fake. She feels like a manikin, being dressed up and put in different positions for all the world to see. She just wishes she could start over, or that she might get her hands on a Time-Turner. Like Hermione Granger in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, she would be able to change the past by going there but without being seen.

_I am slowly falling apart _

_I wish you'd take a walk in my shoes for a start_

_You might think it's easy being me_

_You just stand still, look pretty_

She's slowly falling apart. She will walk through school like a wraith or zombie, not herself. She knows what people think about the Perf Grace King. But what will they think about the nerdy Grace King? The girl who is a wiz at computers and loves to snuggle up in bed with a good book. The Potterhead who can quote characters and sometimes relates things in history to how things go in the book. The Grace who can speak for herself and can answer most questions. "It's so easy to be a Perf," Molly had told her once after kicking Kacey Simons out. Grace wanted to shake her head. She wanted to run after Kacey, the one person who she allows close to her in their exclusive group, and tell her she was sorry. But she doesn't. Why?

Because the Perf Grace King will stay and back her mean friend up. Because the fake Grace King doesn't care about her feelings. But the Grace King inside of her, the one who wants to scratch Molly's eyes out, stays silent. She feels like a cadged dove. All she had to do was stand still and look pretty.

_Sometimes I find myself shaking_

_In the middle of the night_

She sits up in bed quickly, beads of sweat dripping down her skin. Realizing she was shaking violently, she shoves the covers off and pulls on her sweats and a loose T-shirt. She grabs her keys and rushes out of the door before her mother can see her. She stealthily pushes the car as far down the street as she could get it- using the brute strength no one would ever believe she could have- before quietly turning on the car and driving away.

She breathes a sigh of relief as she turns into the park area. The one place where she feels she can, or will, never change. At the park, at night anyway, she can be herself. She can be the real Grace King: the smart, nerdy, Potterhead Grace. She gets out of the car, leaving the headlights on, and sinks down beneath the boughs of her favorite tree, the birch by the swing set. With a delicately manicured finger, she traces the words she and her best friend turned 'enemy' had carved so many years ago.

"Grace&Nelson BFFL," she reads out loud as her finger trace the knotted wood. He was her childhood friend, her knight, and the one who could see through her lies. But she has forced him away, has pushed him out of her life until he just gave up. At first she had been happy- she has what she wants- but then she realizes the best things she has were when she was with him. 'You never realize what you had until it's gone,' she thinks sadly.

_And then it hits me and I can't_

_Even believe this is my life_

Tears stream down her cheeks when she realizes what she had become. They would always talk about the popular kids behind their backs, would joke and make fun of them. But now that she is one of them… it just wasn't the same. Her life sucks and she wishes it would end. Her body still shaking from the realization she has made, she walked slowly back to the car. Opening the glove compartment, she takes out the one thing she never thought she would have to use… and no one will ever know she did.

_But people have problems that are worse than mine_

_I don't want you to think I'm complaining all the time_

"Hi, Grace," Nelson waves to her in that weird way of his she finds especially endearing. She smiles kindly and waves back until Molly elbows her in the rib. Sadly, she stops and watches as he walks away with a dejected look on his face.

"Molly, this has to stop," she tells her friend when they walk into the Perf's bathroom, designed by the ex-Perf Kacey.

"Grace, you can't be seen with that second rate band," Molly comments. Grace feels rage boil in her blood and liquid courage course through her veins. "Look how far that got Kacey. She's dating that loser Kevin!" Molly laughs cruelly, and Grace snaps. Instead of saying some stupid comment, she spins around on her heel and walks out of the fancy bathroom without another word.

"Grace, if you don't come back here, you can consider yourself an ex-Perf!" Molly shouts through the door but Grace ignores her. She relishes the fact that she is finally free of a tyrant and she has abolished the slavery she had brought upon herself. And while she hasn't done that on a large scale, at least she has started out smaller.

_And I wish that everyone would go and shut their mouths_

_I'm not strong enough to deal with it_

Over the next few weeks, Grace slips further and further into herself. She no longer responds to Kacey's kind smiles or Nelson's friendly hugs. She can hear the whispers and see people pointing, which makes her feel horrible about herself. She drags her feet where she goes and no longer smiles; her eyes are dark and stormy instead of light and happy. She isn't strong enough to deal with the pain.

_I am slowly falling apart _

_I wish you'd take a walk in my shoes for a start_

_You might think it's easy being me_

_You just stand still, look pretty_

She sees the blood, she feels the sting, but she shut herself away from the pain it causes. As long as her suffering goes away, she will keep spilling her life-blood away for the sake of release.

Currently in the public restroom at Danny's Smoothie Shack, she has forgotten to lock the door. "Grace," the still-cracking voice she knows anywhere echoed around the bathroom. "What are you doing?" His eyes are wide and his cheeks paler than usual. He was looking from her face to her arm and back.

"Nelson, how'd you get in?" Grace asks, pulling her long sleeve over her arm, wincing when it brushes over the cut. She looks anywhere but at his face, biting her lip.

"The door was unlocked," he answers as he walks over, hesitantly taking her wrist in his gentle hands. "What's going on with you, Grace?" His eyes are filled with worry and she just wants to break down and cry into his shoulder like she used to when they were kids; she would always run to him with bruises and scraped knees and he would always know just how to make it better.

"I-" she has no idea how to word her thoughts, how to tell him what has really being going on with her. So she opts to go for confusion, which is normally her tactic. "I don't know." But as she looks into his eyes, she knows she isn't fooling him, that he can see right through her fake act. How he's known all along.

"Look, stay right here," his eyes plead with her and leave her filled with some unknown feeling as he exits the bathroom and leaves her on her own again. She isn't sure if he's coming back or not, but she notices he has taken the blade she was previously using on her wrist. Then there is a loud noise from outside the bathroom, some screaming involved, before Nelson rushes in with Stevie Baskara behind him. Grace knows she has never been kind to Stevie and vise-versa, but the look on the brunette's face shows just how much she cares about the past.

"Grace," she says in a soft voice. It is different from her usual mean quips and slamming words; instead it is soft and quiet, a whisper almost. Nelson, seeing the wave of Stevie's dismissive hand, exits the bathroom. "Grace, what's wrong with you?" Now comes the harsh words and the blond shrinks back from the tomboy bass player. "Don't you see what you're doing to yourself is wrong?" But instead of the usually fiery look in her eyes, Stevie's eyes hold tenderness and a caring for the wounded blond.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Grace asks a question, dodging the one presented to her. "I've been nothing but mean to you." Stevie sighs and looks down at her converse-clad feet, unwilling to look up at her old nemesis. Grace clutches her wrist to her chest, noticing the red creating a dark spot on the navy blue shirt.

"Because it wasn't you who was mean to me," Stevie tells her, giving her a knowing look. "That wasn't the Grace that I used to know." The brunette gives a genuine smile this time, one she usually reserves for her friends: Kacey, Kevin, Nelson... but Grace has noticed she uses a different smile for Zander. "The girl that I used to know was smart and loved to learn, she was a Potterhead and would never even put the book down to come play softball with her two best friends." And then Grace remembers. She remembers how there were three of them instead of just two in their small group. She remembers how Stevie was the leader, Grace the smart one, and Nelson was the comic relief. This was before Nelson and Kevin became as close as brothers, before Stevie started to fall for the new kid. And this was before Grace left her best friends to join the Perfs.

"I'm sorry," Grace sobs as Stevie's words break down the last of her defenses. Stevie allows Grace to collapse into her arms as the blond begins to cry. "I'm sorry I became one of them. It was all fake and I had no one." Stevie holds her close and let her cry. Stevie blinked to stop herself from crying, mourning the friend she had lost to the world of Popularity.

"Shh," she whispers. "It's okay. We here to help you. Grace, you aren't alone."

_I am slowly falling apart _

_I wish you'd take a walk in my shoes for a start_

_You might think it's easy being me_

_You just stand still, look pretty_

**(Two Months Later...)**

Grace finishes her homework just as the rest of Gravity 5 comes in for rehearsal. Two months ago had been the last time Grace cut herself. Every since then, Gravity 5 has been helping her 'keep it down' as they tell her all the time. She has watched Stevie and Zander go from best friends to boyfriend/girlfriend. And she's seen Molly tumble down without her... seeing as word had gotten around about what she did to Grace. Now Gravity 5 has the best table, but they don't abuse the popularity. "Hey," Stevie greets her as she sits down beside the blond. The brunette receives a beam from her new best friend and laughs as Zander groans and collapses beside her, his head on Stevie's lap. Grace giggled as the official new couple- or as Grace and Kacey like to call them... Zevie- curl up on the couch together. "You guys do have rehearsal, you know," Grace smiles as she tells them, pointing behind the couch to the rest of the band waiting for them to wake up. Stevie groans and stands up, making Zander tumble to the floor.

"We were up until three writing a song," Stevie complains as she helps her boyfriend up. Grace rolls her eyes; it was as if the word 'personal space' is not in their vocabulary, before or after they started going out. "Zander, here," she motions to her boyfriend, "fell asleep and I had to finish the song myself."

"Well, let's here that song," Kacey encourages them, pulling her friends to their usual spots. Grace turns her body and watches as they practice.

"I wrote this song for you, Grace," Stevie motions to her. Grace sits up straighter. "Well, it's in your voice, but I wrote it..." The blond nods, her hand curled into a fist and her nails creating half moons on her palm. And she feels home. This is where she should have stayed from the beginning, with people who actually care about her and like her for who she is, not for who she pretends to be.

**Please review! It took me a long time to write this and I just finished it today. I hope you like it. This is a more sullen Grace than we see on the show, so she's a bit OOC. And I do believe that she used to be friends with Nelson and Stevie—she isn't really as mean to them as she is to the others (although sometimes Stevie 'slams' her, as Kacey calls it, but it isn't as harsh)—and I belive that if she wasn't a Perf she would be part of Gravity 5's group, even if she doesn't play an instrument.**


End file.
